This is What Happens to a Disarmed Gender: Miss America Edition

“Let’s hope Nevada uses her media tour to reiterate that teaching girls self defense is NOT the best way to protect against assault.” Wait, what? That’s the text of a tweet last night by someone named Mandy Velez as reported by twitchy.com. Ms. Velez and others were reacting to newly-crowned (and taekwondo fourth degree black belt) Miss USA, Nia Sanchez, who had the effrontery to suggest that schooling women in self defense might be a good start in doing something about assaults on college campuses. Silly girl. According to her wack-o detractors, she had somehow engaged in “victim blaming.” Can you imagine the magnitude of panty twistitude had she mentioned the possibility of coeds packing a piece?

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“Self defense isn’t the best way to protect against assault” ? Then what is the best way to (do something in relation to assault that involves the words “protect” and “against”?)

Because anything else isn’t “protecting” or “against”. I mean, maybe dressing in a burlap sack and refusing to wear deodorant or wash, but coming from a beauty pageant contestant I don’t think that’s the angle she’s taking.

No, they are suggesting teaching MEN that rape is wrong. The hardest of the hardcore left truly believe that all men are rapists in waiting and some actually believe that unwanted flirtation is a form of rape.

Some folks have a hard time accepting that there are always outliers who will commit acts of violence of one sort or another.

We teach kids not to steal and some end up as thieves (not counting those taught to be thieves by their parents), we teach kids not to hit and some end up starting fights with strangers.

We do actually teach boys growing up to respect women and not to violate the rights of others and some of them end up committing rape.

Simply having the knowledge that these idiots exist is exhausting at times.

All crime boils down to a sense of entitlement as far as I can tell. We broadcast through society that “you are entitled to what you want!” We marinate our children in a message they deserve to have a good life without having to work at it and when the world is reluctant to give to them it’s spoils, some take it by force. Others simply go through life being dissatisfied with what they have and have been robbed of the drive to attain more through legal and productive means.

Telling men “hey, don’t rape” is the same as saying to criminals, “hey, obey the law.” Criminals don’t care about the law, they don’t care about right or wrong actions. That’s what makes them criminals.
I saw way too many responses where women said, “men need to be taught self-control.” This blames the victim. Saying that someone is raped because the man “just couldn’t control himself” means that she did something to make him so turned on that he loses all control. Rape is violence. It’s a person forcing the other to be under their control, under their power and injuring them to get a feeling they want. It’s now, “wow, that girl’s so sexy I want to rape her.” It’s “I’m going to rape her until she cries/bleeds so I am in power over her.” It’s violence. It’s hatred. It’s RAPE. It’s not love, sex or desire. And not every rapist is a man, and not every victim is a woman.
How else are you supposed to protect yourself from the violence of this kind of act? Chastity belts with razor-wire worn all the time? How about learning how to injure the person trying to rape you? How about having a weapon so that when they try to you can hurt them until they stop? Nobody wants to be raped, but claiming it’s coming from somewhere it isn’t doesn’t help prevent it from happening.
This makes me so bloody angry.

What’s really insulting were several tweets in response that said “Women would not need to defend themselves if men would stop raping them.”

I think I can speak on behalf of many men when I say I have not raped a woman, have not taken advantage of a drunken co-ed, and 100% of my sexual encounters have been consensual and with someone of proper age.

I am so tired of being caught with the broad-brush applied to all men on this issue, as though we are all just rapists waiting for that right opportunity.

There are bad people in the world. Bad people will do bad things. It is prudent to be able to protect yourself from bad people. I am not blaming the victim here, but it is worth acknowledging that you have a right to defend yourself. So take classes, get pepper spray, get a taser, and or get a firearm.

Irrational emotional responses lead to broad generalizations, it’s true. Humans like to do the team sports thing, “us vs them”; but it shows signs of a non-thinking person when you take an entire half of the population and “team” them.

The current percentage of my male friends who need to “stop raping me” is currently zero, so, speaking statistics to an asinine comment of that sort, well, that’s pretty easy.

Nevermind the fact that even if “men stopped raping women”, it’s not like human-on-human assaults would suddenly cease, rendering the need for self-defense obsolete.

Funny that, the ‘vegas cop killers’ just mentioned today – well, one of them was, yep, a woman. Yes, women commit violent crime. Maybe it’s not equal proportions, but it sure isn’t – as some commenters would believe – a binary thing.

People are going to continue to hurt other people to get what they want unfairly. Just as they have for thousands of years. That’s not a gender issue.

Its very confusing to be a young man these days, you may think you’re not taking advantage of the drunk girl that walked up, grabbed your Johnson and says “im coming home with you” but you would be wrong if she feels like a whore and changes her mind the next morning.

Lets not forget the double standard here. If the same drunk woman that changed her mind the next morning chose to drive home instead of go with the guy. Being to drunk wouldn’t be a valid excuse for not knowing she shouldn’t be driving. Im not advocating raping women that are passed out but if two functional drunks decide to bump uglies they should be responsible for their own actions.

Oh, they’re not all bad. It is the shrieking feminist harpies that seem to be brainless. They want women to be equal to men, but they want men to treat women differently.

Men are still much more likely to be a victim of violent crime than women. The specific type of violence may vary, but the odds of being a victim of some type of violent crime is much more likely if you are a man than a woman.

Yet this latest cause de jour seems to imply that women are just horribly victimized and that those men, the darn dirty rascals that they ALL are, should just quit this horrible behavior.

What surprises me is not that so many women I know personally seem to disagree with these harpies, but that they don’t do more to come out and say they don’t speak for all women. There is some serious cognitive dissonance with the feminists right now.

And a good way to get your Twitter account suspended is to state the obvious.

For example: self-declared “fat activist” feminists with loud mouths are that way because they don’t care what men think about their looks. ergo therefore they are not beautiful and men pay no attention to them.

A bunch of feminists take that post, mark it as “offensive” and “threatening” and because a lot of them do so, even though I have broken no rules with the tweet, my account is suspended.

Velez was jealous but as a good feminist she knows better than to be accused of slut shaming such an obviously beautiful woman, so she goes after the politically correct progressive line, to set up a strawman to detract from Sanchez’ accomplishments.

So lame, and so typical of the Progtard Feminazi v2.0. desperation to be relevant, when they are not.

eh the “good thing” about “2.0” is that most sane women can’t make heads or tails of it, either. I think you have to be in your early 20s and have a name like “Kortnee” or “Meeaghan” with a left labia piercing to even be initiated into the culture of “fight the ableist white triggering patriarchs who have their privilege showing.” – most of it is even backwards and circular.

You’ll see the same people scream about the death of chivalry after claiming that they didn’t get that job because they showed up to the interview while breastfeeding.

Those posting negatively about Miss Nevada are correct at the core of their argument. There shouldn’t be rapes to begin with. However they are more than a little naive in thinking you can wave some kind of fairy wand full of magic dust and make bad people go away. Maybe some day that will happen but until then I want my wife and daughter to learn how to defend themselves whether it be with a firearm, blade or bare hand techniques.

I understand the line “teach men not to rape” and why self-defense calls can be seen as victim blaming, but holy shit are feminist eating our own here.

The line “you should defend yourself”, especially when it is coming from us guys is translated as “if you only knew [martial art] or had a gun, you wouldn’t have gotten raped”. But in this case, you have a strong, passionate woman (who i would likely say is actually a feminist herself) saying, “beat the shit out of your rapist” (which I fully support). Unfortunately, certain parts of the internet took this as the “it’s your fault for getting raped” which i would clearly state was not her intention.

There is a problem with this thinking, however, of “just defend yourself”. Unlike what people think sexual assault looks like, it’s rarely the masked stranger in the dark ally with a knife. More often or not, it is a friend, former or current partner, or someone else familiar to the victim and the lead up to the act isn’t usually a violent confrontation. The victim is coerced into acts which they don’t desire and they submit to the violation for a variety of reasons, which can include shame, threats of implication of force, cultural norms, etc.

I don’t think Miss Nevada intended to victim blame at all, and was intending to voice support for empowering women. Unfortunately this is a complicated and touchy subject. I think you will see a feminist defense of her very soon, because I haven’t seen too many of the feminist crowd coming out to denounce her; mostly just internet feminist on Twitter and Tumblr.

I’ve heard that there have been cases where the girl decides the day after that she shouldn’t have done it so she cries “rape” so they won’t think she’s a slut. But nothing verified. Anybody got any stats on that?

Perhaps this will kick-off a debate as to realistic “responses”. Women, and especially young women, ought to enumerate all their options:
– wait patiently for evolution in the human condition;
– cloister themselves, e.g., in homes provided by their parents and then husbands;
– rely upon cops;
– rely on the community at large (the public, neighbors, companions);
– empower themselves:
– – martial arts;
– – pepper spray;
– – blunt objects;
– – sharp objects; or,
– – finally, learn from thoughts of Chairman Mao:
“. . . power emerges from the muzzle . . . ”
How much can anyone expect will be achieved within her lifetime in the way of evolution?
Cloistering is certainly an effective tactic which everyone ought to use to some extent; but, it is intrinsically limiting.
If we double or quadruple the number of cops would the problem be solved? Can society bear the expense?
Could we possibly put more emphasis on voluntary community effort? Analogous to those communities that rely upon volunteer fire departments?
Is there any role for individual self-empowerment in self-defense?

What’s really going on is campus feminists, and male co-conspirators (hoping to get lucky, no doubt) are inventing and perpetuating a myth that college campuses are incubators of “rape culture” and are rife, rife I tell you with millions of reported and unreported “assaults.” As if setting foot on the grounds of your average college campus was akin to a trip to Baltimore just off the inner harbor.

Therefore colleges campuses are unsafe for women, transgenders, gender confused, cisgenered, and others. They also lament that they are not given ample warnings that classroom subject matter or reading assignments might include “triggers” that could be harmful to the gender identity of those reading them, or cause additional trauma for “victims” of various stripes.

Do a little googling on the above and amaze yourselves at the the amount of public soapbox time these people with obvious mental illness get. Basically if you have a penis, you are guilty of just about anything under the sun that they imagine happened to them in their twisted minds. Sigh.

The idea that they should be personally responsible for their own safety or that of their friends, is something that is as foreign to them as would be the notion of paying for women’s studies classes out of their own pockets rather than using tax payer funded grants to get all ginned up on their particular brand of warped hate-think.

As a feminist, I find the backlash against Ms. Sanchez’ position to be idiotic bordering on criminal. Heaven forbid we empower women to kick ass when the situation calls for it.

I mean, I get the point of their argument; ideally, women shouldn’t have to defend themselves against a rapist. Ideally, we should need guns to protect ourselves. Ideally. The sad fact of the matter is that we will never reach the Utopian society where this situation exists.

Realistically, the message should be:
Step 1: reduce the number of assholes as much as reasonably possible.
Step 2: Educate people regarding how to defend themselves against the residual assholes that can’t be eliminated.

I used to, but feminism in the 1980′s and feminism today are not recognizable. It’s like feminism took on an ugly meth habit and now looks nothing like that sweet innocent teen in your high school yearbook.

When I called myself a feminist, it was all about women having equal opportunity. Something that has largely happened. Feminism was about women not being punished just for being born a woman, and to give them the same chance as a man with the same skills and qualifications. It was essentially about lifting barriers that were placed around gender for arbitrary reasons. For the most part, that mission was a success. There will always be residual outliers of course.

Today’s feminism? It’s really all about beating up men for being men and that all women should be treated special for having a vagina. In fact, they reference their ladyparts a lot. I’m not even sure with the current dogma a man can honestly say he’s a feminist since men have somehow become the enemy in their eyes.

Screw that noise. They are on their own. The movement left me, to paraphrase a common meme. I still believe in equal opportunity for both genders and I also acknowledge that they are fundamentally different. Not worse, not better, just different. The differences are not bad, in fact it’s what makes women interesting to me. I’m still not clear how, as someone who supported equality for women most of my life, have somehow morphed into the enemy simply due to my gender. Isn’t that ironic?

I’m fairly sure you right, that men cannot be feminists in today’s organizations. They have a special term for them: “male allies”.

From what I can tell, ‘male allies’ are not allowed to be at all critical of the feminist movement, to try to shape the discussion or to try to empathize with females; their role is largely to support females whilst castigating themselves for their ‘male privilege’.

I, as a feminist, see little wrong with that article. The problem with us guys in the feminist movement is we like to take over’. In any movement about empowering the disenfranchised, one of the biggest heartaches is when some ‘ally’ comes in and steals the movements thunder and get their fifteen minutes of fame…

…and those people also tend to turn out to be dirt bags. For the latest example of this, please see everything done by the very straight, white guy Macklemore.

Meh, I define myself and choose my labels as I think appropriate. If that means a few people I don’t care about get the wrong impression of me, so be it. Anybody who actually knows me know what I stand for and the rest can suck eggs.

If we teach people proper right v. wrong it can prevent crimes. It doesn’t imply a zero crime rate, or that we can do away with defenses against crime (either on a personal or societal level), but it can reduce our need for those defenses.

1. It’s bad that there are fires, but there always have been, and there likely always will be.

2. So, you should do X to prevent having a fire.

3. But, if that fails and you find yourself in a fire, you should know how to do Y, to deal with the fire.

That’s called being good at life yo. Applies to all kinds of things. Those chicks got no clues.

But, being a professional victim implicitly means not taking any personal responsibility for anything. Everything is always someone else’s fault, and if it weren’t for them, the world would be perfect. Those meanies!

I had a similar version of this “victim blaming” non-argument thrust in my face after offering that arming women is a pretty damn effective solution to the problem of rape (on campus and otherwise) in another message board I used to frequent. I was so stunned that anyone would seriously offer such a goddamn naive response with a straight face that I didn’t even bother replying.

People delusional enough to believe their own irresponsible propaganda don’t deserve to be raped, for sure, but they are in for a serious wake up call one of these days. The world is not a kind place and it’s even crueler if you’re stupid.

All of these negative twitter comments are from women well versed in accepting their victimhood. They feel threatened when confronted by a strong woman taking personal responsibility for protecting herself and suggesting the obvious to other women. These women fail to take personal responsibility for their own physical defense. They hide behind 50% of the truth which is fine for that 50% (stop men from perpetrating – duh) but their tactics stop there. Their strategy fails miserably and does nothing when one of those evil predators slips through. I am all for using lethal force to stop sexual assault/aggravated sexual assault under the law. Shoot and keep shooting until the threat stops being a threat. Hopefully, she shoots his junk off. No woman should EVER have to go through sexual assault/rape. But these women commenting negatively are well trained victims that have no capability mentally or physically to defend themselves, heaven forbid, if evil finds them. They fight against fighting for their life/sanctity.

I can’t help but wonder if beauty pageant contestants aren’t still self-selecting along the lines of the old Deep South. The old school Southern Belle (well, maybe Scarlett O’Hara, but she wasn’t cut from the same cloth) relied upon their beau or husband to protect them from icky things – and beauty pageants, cotillions and other high society mores were a part of that. The girl who would even admit to having some independence was definitely not coloring inside the lines.

Presumably beauty pageants (er, “scholarship programs”) have transcended beyond this – but in this case at least, it seems the attitude has carried forward.

Let’s be honest…..”self defense” classes for females are nice….it’s a good workout and teaches some useful skills. But for about 99% of women there is simply NO form of unarmed combat they can learn that
will allow them to prevail against a determined male aggressor. It’s simply a matter of size and strength.
I have been around the martial arts for decades. My brother holds a 5th degree in Taekwondo, a 4th in Hapkido and teaches Cane Technique. Both of my daughters are black belts. And they both learned first hand from a friend just how useless their skills were when a 110# female is targeted by a 240# man….who quite simply showed that he could grab them…wrap them up in a bear hug and throw them
into the pool at will whenever he wanted and they couldn’t do a damn thing about it. And THAT is the fundamental issue involved. Professional fighters have weight classes for the same reason…because
SIZE MATTERS.

Pushing for “self defense” classes to prevent rape is not the best return on investment as the benefits gained vs the expense and effort involved is minimal. Traveling in groups, avoiding frat parties, not drinking and partying….ALL will cut down on sexual assault far more than useless touchy feely classes.